Paul Weller (The Jam) met his hero Pete Townshend (The Who) for the first time on Wardour Street in London outside the famous Marquee Club in the summer of 1981. My friend, the writer Paolo Hewitt had organized the interview. He had grown up with Paul in Woking, ‘Smalltown Britain’ where they had seen, as Weller said “the top faces walking through Woking town center”  Weller’s look was resolutely Mod, he later told Mojo magazine “You could say it’s a fashion statement, but I think it’s more than that: the working class love of clothes, looking good, rising above your station. I don’t think it will ever die … These clothes, my haircut, reflect my attitude and the music I listen to, and they say ‘I am an individual’.”

This is one of the first shots I took of them that afternoon – it is a moment in time – Weller looking so sharp in his pin stripe suit. Sir Paul Smith said this image  “completely sums up my teenage years -self conscious and fanatical about detail”.  Later I listened to them talking about music,  mods and life – the interview and this image was a cover story for Melody Maker